Just A Little Family Drama
by theviewfromhere
Summary: What does Hodges value above everything else? Family. But what happens when the most important thing in his life begins to fall apart? Not at all as bad as the summary suggests. Currently on HIATUS because of a lack of inspiration on the writers' part.
1. Chapter 1

K, well, this is just an idea that popped into my head while I was watching 'Lab Rats", and wouldn't leave me alone. I was just thinking how, for such a dynamic character with such possibilities, Hodges didn't get nearly enough screen time. That's what fan fiction's for, isn't it?

Just a Hodges angst story. I wanted to delve a little deeper into his personal life, and show a little of the man inside the annoying, smart – alecky, suck-upish outer shell.

Rated T just in case I need to get into some more mature themes later on. I have a feeling I might.

As this is my first ever fanfic, reviews and kind critisism are welcome and greatly appreciated. Flames are not. Enjoy!

Disclaimer- If I owned Hodges or any of the other CSIs, why do you think I would be wasting time writing fanfiction about them? Couldn't I just… devise my own plot lines?

(I don't own "Rehab", either.)

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_Beepbeepbeepbeep_

Catherine looked down in annoyance at her pager, with which she had already had way too much interaction with this morning. Warrick had paged her at 5 30, requesting backup at a particularly messy crime scene. He _requested_ her backup, that struck her overly tired and slightly spiteful mind as funny this early in the morning. Had she honestly had a choice in the matter? She couldn't very well just refuse to show up at a crime scene, no matter _what_ time it was or how many shifts she had pulled the day before…

Amy Winehouse belting out "Rehab" on the radio shook her from her reverie, and she reached out a hand to shut it off. _Way _to early for that song.

She looked down at her already lukewarm coffee in the cupholder, and wondered what would happen if she simply didn't answer the page. _Probably the same thing that would happen if you just didn't show up at the crime scene,_ the logical voice in the back of her mind said. She knew however annoying that voice could be at times, it was also almost infallibly right, and she reached for the pager.

Her brow furrowed in surprise as she looked at the page. She hung a sudden left toward the hospital as her pager informed her that her presence was _no longer required at the crime scene_, she was to skip right to the victim. She probably wouldn't be conscious anyway, not according to the skimpy information Dispatch had provided for her this morning. It had sounded vicious, 34 year old female, beaten and stabbed in the abdomen in her room at the Tropicana. Catherine wasn't looking forward to having to press this poor, half-dead woman for information on her attack, she couldn't help but empathize instead of sympathize with certain victims. She just had a feeling this was going to be one of those cases.

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The smell hit her as soon as she walked into the hospital. Antiseptic and sterile plastic, but to Catherine, it always smelled more like death.

She met Warrick and Brass outside the ICU, and hoped one of the men had gotten a chance to talk to the vic before she went into surgery. The vic. She should really get her name.

"Any luck?"

It was Warrick who spoke first. He looked as tired as she felt. "She was critical by the time the paramedics got there, she was rushed straight into surgery. Not much we can do but wait."

Brass added, " I've got the whole team working this one. Grissom, Sara and Greg were working a drunken B&E, but I thought this was a little more worthy of your superb talents. They're still working the scene." His voice got dry at the end, but Catherine knew he believed in their abilities just the same, even if the faith was masked by a layer of sarcasm.

Between them, the small group had had 10 coffees and two catnaps before the vic was out of surgery and coherent enough to speak. In the meantime, the two men brought Catherine up to speed on what they knew about the case so far. A woman, Megan Gilesby, had been stabbed in her bed at the Tropicana around 1 or 2 AM that morning, and she had quite nearly bled out. The manager of the hotel found her, when he came up to follow up on a noise complaint from the night before.

"CSI?" The doctor asked, clearly already knowing the answer but needing to make sure, "You can see her now. I don't know much help she'll be. We've got her on morphine, and she _has _been through quite an ordeal, you know." He was fairly young, maybe 30, and his tone implied that they would do her more harm than good to her, interviewing her.

Brass picked up on this, and said, " Sir, the first few hours in an assault case are crucial. We need to find out what she can remember about the attack, and if she saw her attackers face." Seeing the still dubious face of the doctor, he added, " We want to catch this guy."

This seemed to satisfy the man, and he led the group into Megan's room, saying, "We tried to preserve as much evidence as possible during the operation, but the tip of the knife was wedged deep into the pelvic bone, too deep to safely recover."

_Great. _Catherine thought. This was not turning into what looked like a promising case. This feeling intensified once she stepped into the woman's room. Seeing a human being lying helpless on a bed like that, hooked to more tubes and wires than you could count never failed to remind her of her own morality. She closed her eyes. It was _still _too early for all of this.

Megan groaned, and attempted to shift her position to get a better look at her visitors. Catherine and Warrick quickly went to her left side, Brass to her right. She would have been very pretty if she hadn't been so deathly pale. She parted her lips with a clear effort and made a noise that sounded like a dying mountain lion. Warrick handed her the glass of water on her bedside table, and she sipped before trying again.

"David?" She whispered.

"No, we're with the LVPD, Megan. We need to know if there's anything you can remember about the attack, anything at all? What your attacker's face looked like?" Megan shook her head, gasping as she did so. "The clothes he was wearing, if he said anything to you?"

Megan shook her head again and repeated, "David. I want to see David."

Catherine looked at Brass for assistance, who had put away his notebook, obviously deciding the real interview would have to wait, and then to Warrick, who looked just as puzzled and frustrated as she felt. No help there.

"Uhm… can you tell me who David is, so I could bring him here? Is he your husband, or a close family member?" She sighed inwardly. She was asking more questions than were being answered, and she couldn't stop looking at Megan's haunted, frightened eyes and her pained face, as if just holding onto life was a task quickly becoming too much to handle.

"Tell Dave… just tell him." The end of her sentence trailed off into oblivion, and she finally closed her eyes and gave in as sleep carried her away.

Catherine shook her head and looked at Warrick, who was doing the same. She didn't bother looking at Brass; she knew they wouldn't be getting any more answers from this woman, at least not yet.

"Well. That was quite possibly the _least _productive morning I've ever had. And that's including all the mornings I've spent booking last night's DUIs." Brass looked thoroughly vexed, and Catherine wondered if he was wondering the same thing she was: who exactly had had the bright idea to get her up in the wee hours of the morning (well, not exactly the _wee _hours, but close enough) only to wait 3 and a half hours in the hospital waiting room for a totally incoherent woman to tell them absolutely nothing useful. Except, maybe that wasn't completely true….

"We do have _one_ thing we didn't have 3 hours ago." Catherine said, trying to boost morale. Brass and Warrick looked at her expectantly.

"We have Megan's DNA, and the name of someone who quite possibly could be a close relative. If we can locate David, he might be able to give us some information on Megan's life, and her associates.

"That's assuming David is even in CODIS, and we can track him down, and Megan is still alive by the time we get to him…What's up, 'Rick?

Warrick was staring blankly off into space, not absorbing anything they said. "Huh? Sorry, these triple shifts are murder." He managed to crack a crooked smile, more than Catherine herself felt capable of just then.

Brass's cell rang in his pocket, and after a few clipped sentences that didn't really count as a conversation, he turned to the CSIs.

"Grissom and his team are finished with the scene. He wants you back at the lab for a consultation. I'm gonna go see what I can pull up on Megan and our mystery-Dave."

"Call us when you find something?"

"Of course."

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Kay, sorry for the slow start, but I PROMISE it will get going next chapter. So stay with me here, pretty please?


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two! I found this chapter a little challenging; Hodges is a difficult (but extremely fun) character to write. 

Hope you like anyway!

I'm sorry if some of the facts in my case are wrong or inconsistent with each other, I'm not a criminalist. I just watch a lot of CSI, as any one could probably deduce.

By the way, yes, Sara is still working at the lab in my story. Sorry if you disagree with that, but I _really _wish Sara hadn't left the show in the first place. So, here she is, immortalized in my story.

Note: thanks to LoAnne, for being my Beta and critic.

Disclaimer: My name _still _isn't Jerry Bruckheimer or Anthony Zuiker. Therefore, I _still _own nothing.

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_Eyes**…**OPEN**…**keep**…**eyes...OPEN**…**_

Hodges forced his eyes open, gathering all his inner Herculean strength. He groaned, rubbed at his eyes for what must have been the 600th time that day (he thought idly about how red his eyes must be) and groped for his coffee.

The CSIs weren't the only ones who had been pulling doubles upon doubles, even though sometimes it was clear that they thought they were. You could hear them in the halls, wandering around like lost puppies, groaning and griping about everything from reports yet to be written up to the weather outside that day. Didn't seem to have any sympathy left over for the lab rats like Hodges who had been working just as hard (more often harder) as them, without whom the CSIs would be out of a job. They just collected their results with hardly a word of praise, and went on feeling sorry for their poor, underpaid, overworked selves. Sometimes it was enough to make a person want to…

"Hey. Got anything back from that evidence from the Tropicana stabbing yet?" Catherine, sounding exhausted, even though it was only 8 30 in the AM, and _she _had been allowed by her supervisor to go home last night.

"No. Nothing. Call you when I find anything." The migraine threatening to rip his head open prevented him from adding any of his usual sarcastic remarks, or even to create sentences that were more than clipped syllables strung together. The light hurt his eyes, a sheet of paper dropping to the ground hurt his ears, and he thought he might puke if he didn't lie down pretty soon. He wanted nothing more than for Catherine to go away and stop talking (yelling) in his ear. But of course, he wasn't that lucky. Damn CSIs were always so observant.

"You okay? You look like you just finished a 38-hour shift. When was the last time Ecklie let you go home?"

Did he _really _look that bad? If a CSI was commenting on how he needed to take a break, he must really be in bad shape.

" You mean, when was my last full night's sleep? About 2 days ago." Seeing her look of skepticism, he was forced to elaborate, despite the fact that his throat felt like he had just spent the last 2 days rubbing it with sandpaper instead of running evidence. "We were grossly backlogged, so I tried to catch up on some of that, and then Ecklie came with a boxful of trace from some traffic fatality and I ran _that, _and I had to pick up some of the other tech's load because at least half of them have gone home with a headache or the flu or something, and now there's this Tropicana stabbing and…"

He realized he was babbling and shut his mouth. She would probably just counter with her own workload anyway, and expect him to pity her.

To his surprise, she nodded and said, " I'll see if I can get Grissom to pass that evidence over to swing shift. Not like we haven't been picking up enough of their slack lately…"

He closed his eyes in pure joy. Maybe he had been a _bit _harsh in his analysis of CSI behavior…

"You need to keep alert, though, Hodges. Don't screw us over because you can't keep your eyes open." Her tone turned sharp, and with a final "call me when you get something. This is top priority", she turned and Hodges heard her shoes playing staccato on the tiles as she exited his lab.

He tried to roll his eyes, but stopped with his eyes halfway to the ceiling and pressed his hands to his eyes to fight the feeling that the pressure in his head might pop them right out of his head, and silently berated himself for allowing himself to think for a moment that a CSI might actually have enough sympathy to forget for one second about their own problems. He looked at the evidence on his table, and closed his eyes again. Another coffee was sounding really good right about now.

He only wondered if he could drag his body out of the chair it had all but molded to during the last 2 days and make it to the coffee machine.

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Catherine walked down the hallway, toward the break room. She was shaking her head, thinking how _self-centered_ Hodges could be. He had been pulling some appalling shifts lately, true, but he wasn't the only one. She had just finished a couple of back-to-back double shifts herself, but could he drag himself out of his own self-pity for two seconds to realize he might not be the only one with problems at the moment? Nope.

She shook her head and sighed inwardly as she walked into the break room and flopped down on the old sofa that looked as if it had seen better days, probably sometime during the Second World War.

The Lab Techs just didn't understand how easy they had it, sitting in a warm, safe lab all day, letting the machines do their work...

She cut this train of thought off abruptly. Being bitter toward every human being on the planet she happened to come across today wouldn't solve this case any faster.

But, it was still fact. None of the techs really, truly understood how it was to be in the field, though sometimes they liked to pretend they did. It could be unimaginably harsh sometimes.

Take this morning consult with the team. This case had coincided with both day and graveyard's shifts, and at least that was something. Catherine couldn't think of a better way to get this thing solved than to unite both shifts. Together, there was a reason they were the 2nd largest crime lab in the country.

Sara and Grissom were sitting at the round table in the conference room, gazing off into space with identical blank looks on their faces. Greg and Nick were perched on the countertop as usual, looking like they were clutching onto their coffee cups for dear life. There was an air of dejection, so thick it was almost smothering, hanging around the group as Catherine and Warrick had walked in, coming from the hospital.

Grissom looked up as they entered and told them to take a seat. Catherine sat beside Sara, Warrick made his way over to the counter and took his spot beside Nick.

They looked at each other for several seconds, waiting for someone else to break the silence. It was Grissom who finally spoke up.

"Did you guys get anything from our vic?"

Warrick looked at Catherine, letting her take the lead on this one. "We got Megan Gilesby's DNA, and a possible familial match. The only thing she said through the whole interview was 'David'. She wanted someone named David. Brass is searching for any Davids that could be possibly connected with Megan." She fell silent, painfully aware that they hadn't come up with any real answers from the victim; their best chance at IDing their perpetrator. She could only hope that the rest of the team had had better luck with the crime scene, but judging from the dejected looks they all wore, she wouldn't have bet money on it.

"So, you got about as much from the victim as we got from the crime scene, then." This was Nick, and he didn't sound too terribly surprised about it.

Greg elaborated. "The most helpful thing we got was a red fiber on the bed that didn't look like it came from any of Megan's clothes. There was also some trace evidence, but we aren't really holding out much hope that any of it will amount to much. It's mostly little stuff, like some dirt on the carpet and some powder on the nightstand that looked like makeup to me. There were some partials on the doorknob and the kitchen counter, we're running them through AFIS now, but it'll be a miracle if it comes up with anything."

"We don't work on miracles, Greg. Purely science," Grissom reminded him.

"Right, sorry. It will take a great scientific improbably for us to come up with anything," Greg corrected himself, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly. They were all too used to Grissom's devotion to the scientific aspects of the case to be annoyed by it.

"So, no DNA to work with, no fingerprints, shoeprints, or signs of forced entry. And no murder weapon. Not looking altogether too promising, guys." Even the unflappable Greg Sanders Optimism was beginning to get slightly dampened by the lack of answers.

"No signs of forced entry? That means…"

Sara finished Catherine's sentence for her. "Megan probably knew her attacker. Catch is, (_there's always a catch, Catherine thought_) no one that we interviewed from the hotel saw anyone going in or out of Megan's room all night. And if they did, they aren't admitting to it." Sara rubbed her eyes, trying to keep a bright outlook but visibly failing.

Warrick spoke up. "So, to recap, the only useful information we have so far is a couple of mystery fibers and some random guy named David?"

"Exactly." Grissom paused, and taking in the pessimistic looks of his team's faces, added, "We've started with less, guys. It's not the first time we've been stranded up the creek without a paddle." There was a unanimous grin at one of Grissom's rare attempts at humor. The smile faded, however, as the same thought struck everyone at the same time.

_This may not be the first time, but it never gets any easier to canoe without a paddle, does it?_

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Catherine blinked, a far away ringing startling her out of her reverie. As she returned to the present, however, she realized the ringing wasn't as far away as she had thought. It was, in fact, coming from her pocket. She scrambled for her cell phone, hoping whoever was on the other line hadn't hung up yet. She caught it on the last ring, and listened with growing dismay.

She hung up, and shut her eyes tightly. She reached for her caffeine and downed it in one swig, hardly noticing when it burned her throat. She wouldn't have cared even if she had noticed; she had a feeling she was going to need the extra pick-me-up.

She looked at her phone, sighed, and punched in the morgue's number.

It was time to call Doc Robbins, tell him he had the body of a young woman to pick up from the hospital.

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Hodges stumbled into the break room just as Catherine was stumbling out, muttering to herself. She didn't even seem to notice him. That was fine by him; the _last _thing he felt like at the moment was human interaction.

He grabbed some coffee (so thick it practically plopped out of the pot, must have been Sara's concoction) and eased himself onto the same couch Catherine had just vacated. He was just going to lie here for a minute and collect his strength.

Grissom had made his way into the Trace lab not long after Catherine had, asking the same questions she had (how long since you've gone home, why, ect.) and then told him he could home and have the day off. Hodges could only stare up at his boos in disbelief for at least a minute. He had never realized it before Grissom said it, but 'go home' were probably the most beautiful words in the English language. He had jumped out of his chair before his boss had enough time to change his mind, and all but ran to the break room.

Now his momentary rush of adrenaline was catching up with him. He was seeing colors beneath the blackness of his eyelids, dancing colors that he could follow with his mind…

He realized he was drifting off and concentrated all his willpower on opening his eyes and sitting up. When sitting upright became a physical task, it occurred to him that he should probably go home and sleep. He finished off his coffee and stood up, steadying himself on the arm of the couch.

_48 hours… that's a sick, inhumane amount of time to go without sleep…_

He ended up in Grissom's office, and interrupted his boss in the middle of his conversation with Sara, Greg and Nick. They were bending over something on Grissom's desk with their backs to him, but Hodges could have cared less what it was. He just wanted to go _home. _

'Grissom? I'm leaving. If you need me, you'll have to make due without. I'm turning my phone off." He waited, and then when Grissom made a jerky head movement that might or might not have meant he heard what Hodges had said, took a couple steps toward the desk. "Grissom? Did you…"

"Yes, Hodges. I think we can make due without you for a day. Go home." Grissom, tactful as usual. The others hadn't even looked up from the desk.

He nodded, and turned toward the door. Nick had shifted slightly, giving Hodges a perfect vantage point of Grissom's desk. He wasn't intending to stay and look at whatever it was that was immersing the CSIs, but something seemed to catch his eye and he stopped on his way out of the office.

His brow furrowed and he walked close enough to the desk to see what he recognized as crime scene photos. He could make an educated guess that they were from the Tropicana stabbing he had just spent the morning processing trace from, but that wasn't what puzzled him. What troubled him was the feeling that he recognized the face in the pictures, the face belonging to the body lying limp in the hospital bed.

While Hodges tried to put a name to the face, The CSIs finally tore their eyes from the pictures to look at the Trace tech.

"Uh...Hodges? You okay?" Greg was probably the closest CSI to Hodges, having worked with him in the lab for a while until he got his promotion. And even though Hodges could be an arrogant ass at times, the look on his face was almost enough to scare Greg. It was quite a different look from his usual cocky, I'm-better-than-you smirk. This was something else entirely.

The others saw it too, and looked at each other, puzzled.

Then something seemed to click, and his eyes got wide as dinner plates, mouth agape. He shook his head, disbelieving.

"Hodges! Do you-" Sara began, but Hodges cut her off.

"Do you have an ID on her yet?" _Please don't say the name I'm thinking, please God, for once in my life I want to be wrong…_

But nothing else had gone right today, why should this be the exception?

Grissom looked at the trace tech, head cocked, and replied, "Her name is Megan Gilesby. She died in the hospital close to half an hour ago. Is that significant?"

Grissom had never seen such an array of colors grace one person's face in such a short time period. Hodges face went pale, then pure white, then red, and then he looked back down at the crime scene photographs and turned green.

His chest was moving up and down rapidly, in an effort not to puke or fall down. Maybe both. If the CSIs had been concerned before, they were downright worried now.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and opened them looking a little more collected. "Does Doc Robbins already have her in autopsy?"

"He _should…_ Hodges. Did you know this woman?" Grissom asked.

But as soon as Grissom had said Doc should have Megan in autopsy, he was out the door, migrane all but forgotten, almost barreling Catherine down on his way out.

For a minute, Catherine was as confused as everyone else, but then she put two and two together, and her stomach plummeted.

_David… She had wanted David…_


	3. Chapter 3

Ugh. There are times when the chapters practically write themselves, and _then _there are the times when you really have to coax the words out of the back of your brain, hoping the sentences you force out won't make the pathetically small amount of readers you already have think you are some amateur wannabe writer, without any talent to speak of.

Sorry if this chapter is the latter, because I _sure_ know it wasn't the former.

But, I'm also sorry if I'm griping for nothing, for all I know this chapter was actually all right. All you writers out there know that the author is always the worst at critiquing their own work.

And I just want to say, it's probably stupid how happy reviews make me, but they do make me (insanely) happy, thank you so much for the kind feedback. So as always, R&R please!

So read, review and (hopefully) enjoy!

_Note: I am also sorry for the exquisitely short chappy. This is party due to my old friend writer's block, partly due to the fact that I loved the way I ended the scene and I couldn't work out a way to use it anywhere else._

(Again, thanks to LoAnne for Beta-ing, critiquing and threatening to call me and yell obscene things at me if I didn't get this posted. ;)

Disclaimer: If someone could please tell me the purpose of having these things _every chapter, _I would SO appreciate it. I _don't own anything to do with CSI, kay???_

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David Hodges had left Grissom's office at a fairly controlled pace, but by the time he had made his way down to the basement and into the morgue (not really caring who he knocked down or what he knocked out of their hands; he wasn't too terribly concerned what anyone decided to think about him at the moment), he was running too fast to avoid barreling into Super-Dave as he made his way out of the autopsy chamber.

"Whoa man, slow! I know the dead don't care much if they get knocked off their gurneys onto the floor, but me n' the Doc don't especially feel like hauling dead bodies up off their asses and back onto the tables!"

Hodges had managed to run into somewhere around 3 bodies (he wasn't keeping an exact tally) as he sprinted down the narrow hallway in addition to a very irritable Super-Dave.

Hodges shook his head with a breathless "sorry" and thought about how much effort that single headshake would have taken 10 minutes ago. After he got his wits back, he intended to write an article about how migraines were just a state of mind instead of a real illness, capable of being pushed to the back of your mind totally if the right circumstances arose.

"So, you going to just stand there with that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on your face, or you going to tell me what that was all about?" Dave's eyes widened a little at the harsh tone of his own voice, but still didn't apologize. It had been a long day, and the Doc seemed to have adopted the petulant attitude that everyone had been sporting after that carry-on shift. Dave was usually a calm guy, fun to be around, but today was not the day to be screwing with him. Especially right in the middle of the autopsy of a young woman who had been dead so short a time that her liver temp had barely dropped.

Hodges opened his mouth to answer the question, and closed it again when he realized he had no idea what he was going to say. Why _had _he come racing down here so fast, almost out of his mind with worry? Based on _very_ circumstantial evidence, that was why. He wasn't even sure if the woman in the picture was his…

He forced that train of thought out of his mind. It would only have made him start panicking again. His mind then tried to mull over what the fact that he refused to even _think_ her name meant, what his sub conscious possibly already knew for fact… and squashed that thought faster even than the other.

He shook his head to clear it best as he could, and took a deep breath. Once he thought he could open his mouth without his voice cracking, he looked at Dave, who had been looking at him with a mixture of concern and detached annoyance, and began.

"I …uhh… I need to see the body of the vic from the Tropicana stabbing. Grissom wanted me to…collect some trace from her lips." He closed his eyes. It had sounded pathetic, even to him.

Dave evidently thought the same. He lifted his eyebrows and pursed his lips, poster boy for skepticism. "We got all the trace off her already. And you wouldn't have come barreling down here like you did for trace."

Without even realizing it, his patented 'oh _really_' smirk had crept onto Hodges' face as he got his cell phone out and said, " Okay. If you're so sure, I think Grissom would be delighted to hear you refused me access to the morgue because you _already got everything. _He's not in the best mood, a couple of back-to-back double shifts will do that to a person, but maybe you can turn it around. Here." He said, handing Dave the phone.

For one awful moment, Hodges thought Dave was actually going to take the phone and call Grissom, and what would he do then?

But Dave only gave Hodges a withering look and rolled his eyes, hand dropping back to his side. "Playing the Grissom card, huh? Whatever. Just come on. Hey, if you're here to collect trace, where's your equipment?"

Hodges was ready for this one. "I was on my way out when Grissom called, said they missed something," Which was half true, anyway. "I can just use some of the morgue's equipment. You guys have Q-tips, right?" Which, truthfully, was all you needed to collect trace. A clean Q-tip. Not ideal under other circumstances, but he didn't honestly plan on collecting trace this time around.

Dave took this as a rhetorical question, and led him into the morgue. As he watched Dave's back, Hodges wondered what he was going to do, to say to everyone, if this turned out to be nothing, if he didn't know the woman on the autopsy table. Truth was, he would gladly suffer through the questions, the odd looks, the whispers of a breakdown behind his back if God would only let _her _be safe and far away from Al Robbins' autopsy table.

He shook his head, all too aware that his breath was starting to hitch in this chest and his nose was starting to feel plugged up, and he would be damned if he was going to burst out in tears right in front (or behind, if you felt like being technical, he was still staring straight ahead of him) of David Phillips.

They were rounding the corner now, heading for the main autopsy chamber. David looked back at Hodges and, staying true to his kind and caring nature, double shift or not, immediately felt bad about his outburst earlier. Hodges may be a pain in the ass, a suck-up and have a serious superiority complex, but that wasn't _all_ he was. He was a lot of redeeming things, but he chose to keep these qualities close and let them up to the surface sparsely, and usually when no one was looking. God knew why.

"You…ready?" Dave couldn't think of anything else to say. Hodges had an odd look on his face, it was a step below trepidation, and it looked like that was only because he was trying so hard to keep it in check. Not as if Dave believed for a minute that he was really down here to collect trace, but this look confirmed his misgivings. People didn't look like that because of trace.

"Why wouldn't I be? Come on, I want to get this evidence and go home." His heart was racing, but he told himself that was just because his sustenance of the past two days had consisted mostly of coffee.

But as soon as Dave opened the autopsy chamber's doors, Hodges knew he wasn't going home anytime soon.

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To be continued, I promise! And the next chapter won't be so crappily short, this I also promise.


	4. Chapter 4

Sorry for the _insanely_ long hiatus. I was stuck with no inspiration and a slightly depressive month. So I went and wrote an angsty House, MD fic. (Check it out if you know that fandom, the story itself actually doesn't suck too terrible, so I've been told.)

This chapter was a little easier on the old word-maker, and as promised, it is not as insanely short as last chapter. Very angsty, though, borne of almost a month of exams and other stress related issues. But we all love our doses of Hodges-angst, am I right? 

My usual thxies go out to all my friends who have taken a surprising (and quite frankly, embarrassing) interest in my little Hodges drabble-fic. LoAnne especially.

And reviews continue to make my day. As this was my first story, I was half-expecting to get flamed; it was amazing to be encouraged instead. So remember, reviews make the world go round 

P.S. – It has been pointed out to me that my characterization of certain people has been a little off, please tell me if this is still the case. Or if anything else seems off to you. Muchly appreciated.

Warning- Things start to get a little more rated-T this chapter, for mentions of abuse and autopsies and angst. (Wow, did you catch that? The whole A-thing I had going there?)

Disclaimer- I own exactly as much as I did last chapter, and the two chapters before that. If you need a refresher on how much that is, check back there. The chapter will still be here when you get back.

(My new year's resolution? Write shorter chapter intros.)

Looking straight at the autopsy table that held his worst fears on its stainless steel surface, Hodges did not feel his world folding on in itself as he expected he might. He did not experience a great epiphany about life and morality; he did not sink to the floor and scream to the heavens. He merely cocked his head to the left and focused his attention on the rather curious sensation coursing through his body. He felt numbness surge through his veins, like a sort of anti-adrenaline. He thought of anesthesia and hoped he wouldn't loose control of his lower extremities and collapse on the cold floor of the morgue in front of Dave and Doc Robbins, who were looking thoroughly confused as it was.

He looked at the table once more and said, simply, flatly, "Okay."

He spun on his heels and walked out through the exit doors, the image of composure and control. He didn't even have to turn around to feel the two men's stares on his back, looking at each other with the same question reflected in both their eyes: _What in hell was that about? _

Hodges was sure he should be feeling anguish and despair right now, or at least he was pretty sure he should be feeling _something. _Instead, he still felt as if he was on some sort of general anesthesia. It would have worried him slightly if he had been able to assess what was happening, but all he felt for the moment was the feeling that he was on autopilot mode.

He made his way back upstairs to the break room and grabbed a lukewarm cup of coffee from the counter, which he was reasonably sure was his from the end of his last shift. He sipped at it and tried to savor both its bitter taste and the numb tingling feeling still holding his body captive.

He had a sense he would need both of them to get through whatever else the universe decided to lob at him within the next few hours.

She barely even noticed when the words started to dance across the screen this time.

Catherine forced her eyes to uncross and shoved away the little demon inside her head that kept screaming little words of 'encouragement' to her. _Just think how easy it would be to fall asleep right here in this inhumanly hard lab chair, think of all the hours of sleep you could be catching up on, think…_

About this poor woman, who needed Catherine to speak for her now, as she couldn't. She rubbed her eyes with closed fists as she had back in her collage days, when she was trying to make biophysics or something equally mind numbing click in her head. She read over (for what seemed like the thousandth time) Megan Gilesby's personal information. She had what looked like an ideal life in the suburbs of L.A. with a photography career, and a husband of 6 months. Add near-perfect credit and no children (thank God for small favors) to the list, and Megan's life seemed absolutely normal. Catherine kept a jaded attitude toward the whole thing, though. She, of all people, knew what looked good on paper wasn't always rainbows and butterflies in real-time. 

Before her mind could travel further into all the times she had seen a victim's 'perfect life' interrupted by a hidden debt or an abusive spouse or something equally morbid, she cast around her brain for a different topic.

What she came up with was Hodges.

His behavior in Grissom's office earlier had put the CSIs in a state of unease and slight trepidation, especially after Catherine and Warrick informed the others of Megan's dying wish to see David. The use of Hodges' first name and the possible implications had not escaped anyone.

Catherine tilted her head back and rolled her shoulders in an effort to loosen some of the knots that had formed there. She did not need another mystery to solve right now, and she most definitely did not need the guilt that was trying to form in the pit of her stomach as she remembered how harsh she had been to Hodges beforehand.

A shrill ringing pierced through the calm serenity of the abandoned lab.

She jumped about 3 feet high, and wondered why her phone always rang in the silence, effectively elevating her heart rate every single time. It never rang while she was in the company of people she would rather have the meeting cut short

Ecklie 

with. The height of her jump had absolutely nothing at all to do with the amount of caffeine her system was currently contending with.

She held the cell to her ear, and almost did a face palm as she realized pressing the _talk _button might help stop the ringing.

Following the appropriate steps _before_ putting the phone back to her ear this time did indeed stop the ringing.

It was Brass, an unidentifiable emotion in his voice. Whatever news he had, it didn't sound like it was going to bode well.

"Willows".

"Cath? Brass. Uhm...Megan Gilesby. You want 3 guesses what her birth name was?"

She sighed, almost imperceptibly. She had a suspicion she knew exactly where Brass was going with his game of 20 guesses. "Lemme take a wild guess…Megan Hodges. Or am I totally off the mark with this one?" She desperately hoped she was wildly off the mark, but the analytical scientist in her knew the pieces fit too well to be pure coincidence.

There was a moment of silence on the other line that told Catherine everything she needed to know. Brass eventually said, "You have been spending way too much time with your boss, Catherine. That was much too Grissom-esque for my taste."

Brass sounded slightly put out by her spoiling the big surprise, so she quickly filled him in on Hodges' peculiar reaction to the photos.

"So, Megan was Hodges' sister, or what?" The woman in the photos was too young to be his mother, and too old to be anything other than a sister.

"Yep. I called the mother; she's coming up from Palm Beach. And the husband in L.A, he should be here by tonight. Might want to warn Hodges that his family will be having a little reunion here in Vegas. I don't think they're on the best terms with each other."

"How would you know that? He's never said anything about his family, did he?"

"It was just the way the mother didn't seem overly devastated on the phone. I mean, she wasn't happy or anything, but there wasn't any crying going on either."

_Great. All we need is more tension around here_, Catherine thought exasperatedly.

"Thanks, Brass. You get anything else on Megan?"

The answer was negative, only that he was headed to the lab now. She thanked him again and killed the connection.

_Well, this sucks, _Catherine thought dejectedly, using one of Lindsey's favorite phrases. Thinking of Lindsey jogged her memory, and she whipped out her phone to leave her a message on the home phone: She wouldn't be home tonight; there were leftovers in the fridge, call Mrs. Nicosia if she needed anything. The usual.

Another knot of guilt tried to form in her stomach, but she forced it away for further consideration later. Mourning the amount of time (or lack thereof) she had spent with her daughter lately wasn't going to change her current situation: How to tell a coworker he has just spent the afternoon processing evidence from his own sister's murder.

He ambled into Grissom's office just as calm and collected as he had left the morgue, and lowered himself gently into a chair that had been pushed up against the wall. Grissom did not look the least bit surprised to see him; Dave and Doc Robbins had probably already called him.

It never failed to amaze Hodges how his boss seemed to be able to pluck thoughts out of his head and voice them, almost as if they had been his own. "Dave and Al called me already. The team should be here any minute."

Hodges was glad Grissom had thought to call everyone together; he would rather not have to tell this story 5 different times.

It hadn't taken long for everyone to assemble in Grissom's office. Everyone was hungry for a lead on this one; it had been an uncooperative case from the get-go.

As he was about to begin, his mind made an uninvited contrast. With all of them sitting there looking at him like that, he couldn't help but be reminded of his childhood, telling Megan stories as she sat, hanging on his every word as if they were liquid gold. He took a shaky breath and closed his eyes. This was going to be harder than he thought.

While Hodges was trying hard to get his bearings, the CSIs exchanged uneasy glances. Catherine and Brass were the only ones with a real grasp on what was going on; Nick, Warrick, Sara, Greg and Grissom were still majorly in the dark.

Just as they were all wondering whether or not one of them should say something, Hodges spoke suddenly, shattering the silence.

"I want to know what happened to my sister." Everyone except Catherine, Grissom and Brass either gasped or shared wide-eyed looks. This was pretty high on the list of ways they had _not _expected this conversation to start.

Grissom spoke first, in his most reassuring-yet-firm tone of voice. "We don't know. We need to shed some light on who Megan Gilesby was. Hopefully, what you can tell us will give us some leads on the case." Interpreting the look on Hodges' face, he added, "Start at the beginning."

"Beginning…" Hodges murmured under his breath, and after a moment more, his voice gained strength as he finally began.

"I haven't seen her since I moved to Vegas, but we talked on a regular basis. She would call me every month or so, just to see how things were. Neither of us have talked to our parents in…years. We spent our childhood taking care of our terminal father. He had lung cancer, and Mom thought it was our duty to be there as his body slowly suffocated itself.

"By the time I was ready to go off to college, and Megan was graduating from high school, he was practically in a vegetative state. Drastically decreased brain function from the painkiller cocktails the doctors had him on; he needed a ventilator to breathe, and constant monitoring was required. I just… we didn't want that to be our life. I took the money I had been saving and put myself through college on my own, and Megan took the full ride she had been offered. We abandoned out parents, and left Mom to deal with everything on her own. She practically disowned us after that."

The anesthesia feeling was definitely starting to wear off now; he could feel a dull ache in his chest that he was sure would only increase with time, once he had a chance to evaluate all that happened with a clear mind.

He had already said much more than he had planned to, but judging by the rapt look on the CSIs faces, he had captured their attention with his soap opera of a childhood already. " Neither of us ever called, wrote, or made any efforts to reconcile things. I guess we were still annoyed at having our lives controlled by something we had no control over, but in my mother's eyes, I'm still a disappointment for trying to make a life for myself. We both are. Were."

Everyone looked at Hodges, resident lab rat, shocked beyond words. Catherine shook her head imperceptibly, amazed at how well he had hid this. He had never shown any signs of something like this in his past. It was possible he had been a little touchy, a little more withdrawn whenever a tragic case involving tough family issues had come up, but hadn't they all? And, truthfully, during these particular cases, it was the CSIs who had been most affected by them, because of the close proximity they had to work around the broken family in question. Or, so they had thought. During these (and most) cases, they had enough trouble keeping their own emotions in check, barely noticing any irregularities in Lab Rat behavior, unless it was blatantly obvious. And usually, it wasn't.

Hodges continued in a rushed tone, his own emotions catching up with him fast. " So, we went on with our lives and tried hard not to think about our family if we could help it. She lived in L.A. Back when I lived there, we saw each other at least once a week, and she still called me regularly here in Vegas. Although…" He stopped abruptly, an odd look crossing his face.

"What? Although what, Hodges?" Greg Sanders looked concerned, and reached out a hand. It looked like he had been going to put his hand on the other man's shoulders, but thought better of it at the last minute and ended up poking him gently. "Dave?"

The use of his first name seemed to prod him out of his thoughts. "She called me a few months ago, she said she met this guy. He was smart, and funny, and the usual. But ever since she met this guy, I've been hearing less and less from her. I had my suspicions, obviously, but it wasn't as if I could just take off to L.A., find her, and tell this guy to back off. For all I knew, she was perfectly happy, just busy." He shook his head at his own stupidity. He hadn't taken enough of an interest in his sister's life, and look what had come of it.

Before anyone could tell him it wasn't his fault, he couldn't have known, he looked at Brass. "You said you called her boyfriend? Was he at home?" He couldn't have killed Megan in Vegas, flew back to L.A, and still have had time to get back home in time for Brass's call.

"He's a prominent businessman. I got a hold of his cell number and called that, figuring he's the type of person who would carry it with him everywhere he goes." He paused, and added, "That's not the type of thing you leave on an answering machine unless you absolutely have to. He could have been anywhere when he took that call, I didn't think to trace it at the time." He shrugged and looked almost warily at Hodges, as if expecting him to take out some of the anger that was common in the families of the recently deceased out on him.

But the lab rat seemed to be disregarding the Five Stages of Grief completely, at least for the time being. He was managing to keep a check on his emotions for now, although his hands had begun to tremble slightly.

Catherine, wanting to stop this conversation before it really got going, interrupted the exchange between the two men by saying, "Hodges. You need to go home, and get an uninterrupted night's sleep. We will call you if something critical comes up, all right? You don't need to stay here."

He looked her in the eye and said, evenly, "If this were me, she wouldn't sleep." He pauses, trying to decide what he should say to follow that up, but finally just decides on, "I'm going to go do something productive. My phone'll be on if there's a new development."

With that, he started back to the Trace Lab to re-run all the evidence he had just finished processing. He wasn't taking any chances with this one.


End file.
